I’m excited to bring you our seventh annual Agents of Change Business Voice issue this month. Given all the excitement throughout our city this fall, it’s a natural fit to profile some of Halifax’s risk-takers and change-makers. Check out our cover story on page 16.
In case you missed some of the excitement on Nov. 1, 800 Chamber members and guests gathered in the Halifax Convention Centre for our Annual Fall Dinner. This year, we profiled the startup community and engaged Malcolm Fraser, President and CEO of Innovacorp to share his insights on how Halifax can encourage and grow a startup environment. Throughout the evening we scratched the surface of what some of these near-500 Nova Scotian startups are contributing to the global economy and why they’re choosing to keep their roots right here.
I commend Malcolm’s goal of making Nova Scotia one of the top 10 startup ecosystems in the world — yes, the world. Halifax has access to the resources to achieve this goal; venture capital, post-secondary institutions and talent, engaged government, strong private sector companies and incubators like Volta Labs and Creative Destruction Lab all play a key role in our startup ecosystem’s success. Malcolm challenged the audience to partner with a startup, innovate within our own organizations, engage with a university or college and connect with other Chamber members to build networks. Are you up for this challenge?
Just a few weeks prior to our annual dinner, we partnered with BDC to celebrate Small Business Week through a variety of events, training and our first “Shop Local” campaign on Friday,
Oct. 19. Leading up to this event, our team reached out to volunteers to storm the city in preparation for Small Business Week. We divided and conquered and I am proud to say we visited close to 300 small and medium-sized businesses on Oct. 5, sharing the campaign to promote local throughout Halifax. You can see some of our results through our hashtag, #ShopLocalHFX on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Excitement for our 19th annual Halifax Business Awards is building and I encourage you to watch out for some of our inspiring business community leaders in January’s edition where we profile
30 businesses and leaders as finalists.
As 2018 draws to a close, I encourage you to review some of your goals you set for yourself and your business at the start of the year and take stock. Did you have a successful year? Did you challenge your team to achieve more?
Heading into 2019, I would like to challenge you to set some scary goals for yourself. For example, is there a new product or service you can add? Could a co-op student help with this? What about a technology that can help streamline your business? I wish you the best in finishing 2018 as strong as you started and head into 2019 with clear goals to help your business (and Halifax!) thrive.
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